State Dept. changes story on Clinton emails

In a reversal, the State Department acknowledged Friday that a Congressional investigation into the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi played a role in the agency’s decision to ask Hillary Clinton and three other secretaries of state to turn over copies of all work-related emails they sent or received on private accounts during their tenure.

State spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters that a special House committee’s ongoing probe into the Benghazi incident was one of many factors that led the department to send a request last October that resulted in Clinton sending her former agency 55,000 pages of emails she exchanged on an unofficial account.

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“Certainly, that’s a factor, but … as we’ve said now a few times, it was not any one thing that prompted this,” Harf said at a daily briefing dominated by questions about the email issue dogging Clinton as she prepares to launch a presidential bid. “It would be grossly simplistic to say that any one thing prompted us to send this letter.”

Earlier this week, Harf and other state department officials said the decision to approach the former secretaries about searching their personal email accounts stemmed solely from a broad effort to update the State Department’s electronic recordkeeping efforts.

“When in the process of updating our records management — this is something that’s sort of ongoing given technology and the changes — we reached out to all of the former secretaries of state to ask them to provide any records they had,” she said Tuesday.

Asked that day if there was any link between Benghazi-related document requests and the missive to Clinton and other secretaries, Harf replied, “It went in October of 2014 – that was before we had gotten a request from the [Benghazi select] committee – as part of our records maintenance upgrading and the process we go through. So that was what drove that.”

A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said Tuesday that the request for Clinton’s records was “independent” of and unrelated to the Benghazi probe.

POLITICO reported Friday that White House officials became aware in August that documents sought in the House Benghazi investigation contained Clinton’s private email address. The White House flagged the issue to the State Department and Clinton aides, but the former secretary’s staff decided to take no action at that point.

The issue remained under wraps until earlier this week when The New York Times reported that Clinton relied solely on a private email account during her service as America’s top diplomat.

Late Friday, a senior State official emphasized that only a fraction of the Clinton e-mails provided to State pertained to Benghazi.

“An October letter went out to all former Secretaries in an effort to ensure the preservation of official records, particularly given recent [National Archives] guidance and the increasing reliance on email. Like other agencies across the government, we are also in the process of updating our processes to manage and preserve records in an electronic format,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “While a small percentage of Secretary Clinton’s emails were responsive to the Select Committee’s November request, the vast majority were unrelated and it would be oversimplified and inaccurate to draw the conclusion that the preservation of her records was done for one purpose.”

Developments in the email saga and other controversies that have caused headaches for Clinton’s yet-to-be-launched presidential bid continued to unfold Friday.

A top adviser to President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, suggested that Clinton’s reliance on private email for official work went against clearly established White House directives.

“I do know that obviously the president has a very firm policy that email should be kept on government systems. He believes in transparency,” Jarrett said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “I know that the State Department is currently working with the National Archives to make sure that all of Secretary Clinton’s emails are captured.”

Jarrett declined to say directly whether Clinton violated policy, saying such a determination was for State to make. “We established the policy here, but then we leave it up to every single agency to determine how to adhere to that policy,” the Obama adviser said.

But a potential Republican rival to Clinton in the presidential race, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, seemed to suggest that Clinton’s use of a personal email server jeopardized sensitive State Department information. He described her use of a personal email server as “baffling.”

“For security purposes, you need to be behind a firewall that recognizes the world for what it is and it’s a dangerous world and security would mean that you couldn’t have a private server,” Bush told Radio Iowa. “It’s a little baffling, to be honest with you, that didn’t come up in Secretary Clinton’s thought process.”

Bush also had his own private web domain and e-mail account as governor. Some of those messages were requested and disclosed under state public records laws while the former governor was in office from 1999 to 2007.

Bush apparently took the archive with him when he left, but sent a subset of 250,000 of those emails to a state archive last year. The former governor also released them to the public last month on a website designed to bolster his presidential hopes.

Some of Clinton’s records are expected to be made public by the State Department, but that could take months.

Meanwhile, another venture that has caused negative headlines for Clinton in recent weeks, the Clinton Foundation, is going to be put under the management of a longtime Clinton loyalist: former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.

The foundation came under fire last month for resuming fundraising from foreign governments after Hillary Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in 2013.

Shalala, who resigned last year as president of the University of Miami, is expected to move to New York soon to become chief executive officer of the foundation.

Eric Braverman stepped down from that post in January in what POLITICO reported was a power struggle between veteran Clinton backers and skilled outsiders brought in to professionalize the foundation.

Clinton loyalists insist that none of the current controversies will register with voters. But with questions swirling about whether the private email arrangement was intended to prevent access to her records and whether it complied with federal laws and regulations, Clinton called Wednesday for the State Department to make the 55,000 pages of emails public.

“I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible,” Clinton tweeted.

Harf indicated Friday that State’s review of the documents is still getting underway. “That will start soon,” she said, cautioning that it is likely to take several months.

The State spokeswoman said the review process will use normal standards for Freedom of Information Act requests. Those rules require deletion of classified national security information, personal information and business secrets, and allow for deletion of information about internal decision-making processes and legal advice.

Harf denied a report in The Washington Post that State was reviewing Clinton’s email in a search for potential security violations. “An initial press report that we are doing an investigation of her email for security reasons is not correct,” she said.

At the briefing Friday, Hart tangled with reporters who said State Department regulations, a cable sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts in 2011 and a State Department inspector general report from 2012 all made clear that State employees should not routinely use personal email for official business.

“I think you’re oversimplifying,” she said, insisting that the warnings applied only to use of personal email for information considered “sensitive but unclassified.”

“It was not a general policy or guidance about email use in general. It refers to one specific kind of email use,” Harf added.

POLITICO reported Thursday that a provision in State’s Foreign Affairs Manual states: “It is the Department’s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized [State Department computer system], which has the proper level of security control …”

While the provision appears to make a general statement about agency policy, Harf noted that the section of the manual in which the language appears is devoted to “sensitive but unclassified” information.

Harf said the 2011 cable urging State staff to “avoid conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts” was simply advice prompted by hacking incidents Google announced publicly at the time.

“It’s helpful tips for people … some helpful tips when you’re using personal email,” she said.

Harf flatly denied that political pressure from the White House, Clinton aides or Clinton supporters was affecting the State Department’s handling of the email situation or would impact the review. However, the spokeswoman continued to have no response to questions about whether anyone at the department specifically authorized Clinton’s use of the personal account as her sole email or whether anyone discouraged her from using such an account due to the dangers of hacking.

Harf provided a bit more detail about the 55,000 pages of email records, saying they arrived from Clinton’s aides in paper form and span the entirety of her time as secretary. The spokeswoman confirmed that the department relies on Clinton’s camp to decide which email were work-related, a practice Harf said is consistent with each government employee’s duty to preserve official records.

“It wasn’t spreadsheets for [Clinton’s] daughter’s wedding, but it was anything related to official business,” Harf said.

“Each individual employee has a responsibility under the federal regulations to preserve their own records. With a State Department account or a personal account, when you walk out the door, it is your responsibility to provide those,” Harf said.

“When you walk out?” a reporter asked, alluding to the fact that Clinton did not provide her records when she departed, but some 23 months later.

“There was no time [requirement.] That was colloquial,” Harf replied. “Thank you for fact-checking me live and instantaneously during my press briefing. You should come more often. I like it.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere contributed to this report.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the name of the university at which Shalala served as president and to clarify the accessibility of e-mails Bush sent and received on a private account as governor.